Everything comes together in the Capstone. You will draft a complete story, narrative essay, or memoir of 8–15 pages. With the advice of your peer readers, you will revise, rewrite, and complete it. The skills you’ve learned of plotting, setting, physical description, characterization, and stylistic clarity and innovation will culminate in an original work of art all your own. We’ll discuss the steps that professional writers take to bring their work into the public world. Along the way you’ll learn the patient habits of revision that make up the writer’s life.

From the lesson

Using Critique and Sanding

Some of the critiques you’ve received will seem immediately right, some more challenging, some may seem averse to your goals. This week we discuss the “Dear Workshop” Letter: a way of settling your thoughts and making decisions about what to do with all that sometimes conflicting advice as you proceed toward the final draft. We also take a moment to do a shorter critique focused more closely on the word-level decisions that you and your fellow-writers have made. You’ll perform a “sanding revision” on a single page of three of your fellow writers’ stories—you’ll report to the writer all the places her language or punctuation could use clarifying, and, just as important, where they’re already working at their best.